From the History of the Reign of Solomon I in Imereti (1766-1768)

All known official appeals from Imereti to the Russian court in the 18th century were made under strict secrecy from the Ottoman Empire, and the embassies were either headed by clergy or representatives of the clergy were always part of the embassies. The principle of forming the composition of the embassy clearly indicates that the clergy of Imereti, as well as Kartli-Kakheti, was directly involved in political issues, and the ambassadors were supporters of the current rulers or kings. The clergy served as a living proof of Imereti’s commitment to the Christian world, despite Ottoman rule, oppression and the decline of religious culture. However, during the period we are considering, the first appeal of Solomon I to Russia for support (1766), he attracts only a representative from the Imeretian princes. The organization of the message was entrusted to Prince Kaihosro Tsereteli. Then the connection with Kizlyar was secretly maintained through the hegumen of the Ossetian spiritual commission Gregory, who already in 1768 was instructed to deliver a response message from Russia to Solomon, on condition that the secrecy of the owner’s correspondence with Russia be kept. The Imeretian and Abkhaz Catholicos Vissarion, acting at that time, cannot participate in this secret case, due to opposition to the king of the Rachinsky Eristovs, other persons from the Georgian clergy are not involved by Solomon either. Solomon’s non-representative appeal to Russia can only be associated with his position ol an exile and his inability to form the composition of the embassy, which is assigned to the tsar. Instead, we see that King Solomon is sending a single “messenger” with an important message from the princes of Tsereteli. Based on a comparison of the known historical facts of the reign of Solomon I in Imereti and the information presented in the document under consideration, the conditions and reasons that led Solomon in 1766 to a written appeal to Russia about the possibility of granting him political asylum are clarified.

Domestic violence in the UK Zimbabwean diaspora

Political instability in Zimbabwe since the late 1990s resulted in a swelling of Zimbabwean political asylum seekers in the UK. Living in a developed liberal democracy may challenge traditional intimate relationship norms for both husbands and wives. A snowball sample of 30 interviews were conducted over a period of six months in 2019 with participants from Zimbabweans living on mainland UK. Our thematic analysis highlights how domestic violence predicates on cultural tensions in traditional patriarchal and liberal influences. Victims/survivors report difficulties disclosing the violence and discrimination by peers. Our findings have important implications for domestic violence interventions and those wanting to support victims.

“Not the Paradise We Imagined”: The Discursive Politics of the “True Self” in Queer Middle Eastern Refugee Migrations

The use of “true self” in western media coverage of queer Middle Eastern refugees is a contradictory, unattainable identity for queer Middle Eastern refugees. This “true self” suggests that queer Middle Eastern refugees are only able to live out their essential queer selves after receiving asylum and moving to the west. This narrative of true selfhood ignores the rupturing, transformative process of refugeehood, as well as the geographical-historical conceptions of identity, and relational, place-based making of self in which refugees become refugees. True selfhood, disguised as western freedom, serves as merely another normative script in which queers in the west must present their identities as legitimate to a heteronormative, cisnormative society that does not conceptualize of other formations of self. Here, the contradiction between true selfhood and queer Middle Eastern refugeehood becomes a site where the logic of political asylum regimes breaks down, and where other understandings of queer Middle Eastern refugee selfhood may start to emerge.

Esilio di Camilian Demetrescu in Italia. Militantismo, anticomunismo e professionalità

"Anti-communist by excellence in spirit, the painter, sculptor and illustrator Camilian Demetrescu left Romania and went to Italy, tired of the continuous persistent attempts of the Securitate to attire him into becoming a collaborator. He left Romania legally in 1969, with a passport, and when the visa expired, he asked for political asylum. His stay in a capitalist country, but most of all the depths of his cultural and political exile, reflected in the articles of the Italian printed press and in the participation to actions or congresses, determined the Securitate not only to target him informatively, but also to threaten him, fact that did not stop him from being up to the end, with stoicism and determination, a convinced and militant anti-communist, a promoter of democracy and of human rights, but also an artist, who kept in his paintings, illustrations and sculptures the emotional relationship with Romania. Keywords: anticommunism, political exile, militantism, art, democracy "

Representing Sanctuary

This article takes sanctuary as a problematizing challenge to the state, coming into effect when political asylum fails or is denied. Sanctuary, it argues, offers a form of protection that does not take legality as its basis or reference point, and in fact often subverts such legality. Thinking with Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (2011), this article seeks to understand the kinds of “individual” protection that sanctuary makes possible, and what they illuminate about conceptions of refuge that do not require sovereign authorization, but instead find their foundations in interpersonal relationality, solidarity, and community formations. Through a “flat migrant aesthetics”—deadpan, anti-realism, and unarticulated motivation—Kaurismäki’s film dislodges automated perceptions and clichéd narrative expectations to redirect attention to human solidarities and the building of sanctuary, on and off screen.

The Problems of Survival for the Diasporic Sri Lankan Tamil Society Depicted in the Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Literature

Diasporic Literature becomes a prominent place in the field of literature. So is to the Sri Lankan Tamil Diasporic Literature. It is because the Sri Lankan Tamil diasporic literature speaks about the identity of the Sri Lanka Tamils who are in the verge of losing their language and culture in the hosting countries where they seek political asylum. The present study analyses the challenges faced in the life of the displaced Tamils. Also, this study explains not only the emergence of the new life condition when the large number of Tamils displaced from Sri Lanka during the ethnic conflicts broke out after 1980’S and the challenges, and oppression that they underwent in the aspect of family, profession, education, language, and culture as they have been put into the new life condition as political refugees, but also asserts the fact that the diasporic literature is the social documentation to expose such vulnerabilities of the diasporic victims. Therefore, the present study arrives at a conclusion that there.

12. Tribunals

Panels, committees, tribunals, referees, adjudicators, commissioners, and other public authorities decide many thousands of disputes each year over (for example) entitlement to benefits, or tax liability, or political asylum, or the detention of a patient in a secure hospital. The massive array of agencies reflects the great variety of benefits and burdens that twenty-first-century government assigns to people. The array had no overall organization until 2007, when Parliament transformed it into a complex system. This chapter explains the benefits of integrating these decision-making agencies in the new system. The law needs to tailor their structure, processes, and decision-making techniques to the variety of purposes they serve. And the law needs to achieve proportionate process by reconciling competing interests in legalism and informality in tribunal processes.

Part III Regional Regimes, Ch.17 Regional Refugee Regimes: Latin America

This chapter shows how Latin America has played a rather innovative and creative role in the development of regional political asylum and refugee regimes. It reviews both the historical contribution of Latin America’s political asylee and refugee sub-regimes, and the region’s protection situation and key challenges. The chapter aims to answer the following questions: what is the concept of the prevailing asylum regime in Latin America and what are its sub-regimes? What is the current protection legal framework in the region? What is the institutional framework and its contribution to the protection of asylum seekers, political asylees, and refugees in Latin America? What are the major protection challenges currently faced by the region? In terms of its regional coverage, it considers that, of the 35 independent States of the Americas that are members of the Organization of American States, 20 of these may be regarded as Latin American States—that is, bearers of Spanish, Portuguese, or French cultural and linguistic heritage.

Exiles in Mexico

In the Latin American milieu, Mexico stands out as a host nation for exiles. It is somewhat paradoxical that a country with very restrictive migration policies was always willing to receive victims of political persecution, and later expanded this behavior to include victims of ethnic, religious, and gender persecution, generalized violence, and natural disasters. Explaining this paradox involves considering the transformations that the 1910 Revolution introduced into Mexico’s domestic and international politics and how these transformations impacted abroad, above all in the Latin American space, projecting the idea of a nation committed to the construction of political order and just and democratic societies. Political asylum and the Refugee Status Determination are the legal instruments by which Mexico has welcomed foreigners in conditions of extreme vulnerability. The widespread use of these instruments forged the image of Mexico as a nation of exiles. Many victims of persecution entered the country under the protection provided by the instruments of political asylum and refugee status; undoubtedly, many more did so by circumventing migratory obstacles thanks to generous governmental conduct in situations of political persecution. A journey through the most important experiences of exiles in Mexico must start with the first Latin American exiles persecuted by dictatorial regimes in the 1920s, before turning to the case of the Spanish Republicans after the Civil War in the late 1930s, and then immediately incorporating European victims of Nazism during World War II. During the Cold War a second stage of exile began with the arrival of Americans persecuted by McCarthyism in the United States, and later by the influx of thousands of Latin Americans victims of new military dictatorships. This cycle ended at the beginning of the 1980s when large contingents of Guatemalans crossed the border with Mexico to protect themselves from a war of extermination launched by the army of that country. The size and the social composition of this exile obliged Mexico to draft policies for the reception of victims of persecution that led to adjustments in national legislation and strategies for collaboration with the United Nations. In the final decades of the 20th century, the redemocratization processes in Latin America led to a marked decrease in the number of victims of political persecution. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 21st century Mexico has faced new challenges, no longer in terms of political asylum but in terms of refuge. The increasing flows of foreign migrants who, irregularly, transit through Mexican territory to reach the border with the United States and the migration enforcement policies implemented by the US government have generated a considerable increase in requests for refugee status in Mexico. This phenomenon, unprecedented in the history of the reception of victims of persecution, leaves Mexico facing an enormous challenge in terms of humanitarian protection for foreigners who flee their countries to preserve their freedom and protect their lives.